DIY Romance
Imaginary Girlfriends
by Josh Tyson


I have a real girlfriend now, so it’s been awhile since I’ve played this game. But the last time I clearly remember playing was on the subway. I got on this one car, and there was an enormous street guy sitting at the back with all of his personal effects stuffed into bulging garbage bags that were spread out all over several seats around him. He looked like a nice enough fellow, but he smelled like pickled barnyard. I sat at the other end of the car, but the smell was too much. I switched cars at the next stop.

I sat at the back of my new car and stretched out. I was getting deep into a magazine when I felt a hot fart slip out. Oh the smell. Barbequed shit on a bun. It was still going full-fog when the car stopped, and my new imaginary girlfriend got on. She sat right behind me and didn’t move. I looked back at her and she hadn’t grimaced at the odor. Maybe she had a cold. She was the imaginary girl for me. She and I had on the same hue of grey Dickies. Hers were rolled up, though, and she had on these poo colored leg warmers. She was all punk and shit. She looked mean, but with a sweetness that had hitherto gone untapped. That was my in. I’d come on strong and dirty; now it was time to show her my softer side.

We went to the zoo and laughed at this one llama that looked just like David Bowie in Labyrinth. Then we went to the chimp house and got depressed as they picked their asses with their people hands and pissed on hay bales and pleaded with us for release.

We had to go get some booze after that, so we sat in a grimey dive bar and talked about old Dr. Who episodes. The night ended there, as she’s not that kind of imaginary girl. By the end of our imaginary time together, I’d overshot my stop and had to walk an extra mile home. On the way I passed by the diner where my old imaginary girlfriend worked.

Recently, she and my friend Adam had imaginary hooked up. He’d go in there once a week to order food and have imaginary dates with her. He likes art and I guess she’s an art student, so they’d go to the Art Institute and stuff. When I found out that he was moving in on my old imaginary squirrel, I was imaginary fucking pissed, and it went to imaginary fisticuffs. After that we were pretty tired, so we went to a bar to relax and regale one another with tales of imaginary love gone awry. Then we took some photos in a photo booth to seal the camaraderie. We clapped each other on the backs as we watched the strip of pictures dry, confident that we’d have many imaginary dates with many imaginary girlfriends for a long time to come.